Families As We Are: Conversations from Around the World

Families As We Are has at its core the words and ideas of ordinary people. Huston spent more than four years interviewing three and four generations of families of all socioeconomic backgrounds in twelve countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, El Salvador, Japan, Jordan, Mali, Thailand, Uganda, and the United States.

While others mourn the loss of "family values," Huston discovers families who are strengthening themselves to face new realities. She describes the new forces that are changing families and finds positive as well as negative values in these transformations. While traditional families have been undermined by urbanization, economic transformation, emigration, and the global information culture, the family has also been positively changed by an increased regard for individual liberties and democratic values, and by a breakdown of patriarchal power.

Huston expands the definition of family, demonstrating that families come in all sizes and forms, from small nuclear families to large multigenerational groups, from street children who band together for protection and companionship to groups of prostitute women who live together and care for each other's children. Through the words of scores of family members, this volume presents families reinforcing and revisioning bonds forged of tradition and pragmatism, respect and love, as they face the challenges of the new millennium. Huston's fresh perspective—gained from several decades of working directly with families around the world—leads her to conclude that while the changes in families "may look like breakdown to those facing backwards, it looks like renovation to those facing the future."

Perdita Constance Huston (1936—2001) was an American journalist and women's rights activist. She is commemorated by the international Perdita Huston Human Rights Award.